1. A little over a decade after the “collapse of Communism”, it might appear that Marxist theory has been relegated to little more than an historical or even archeological artefact with little relevance to or influence over an ever encroaching and expanding, globalising capitalism. Socialism “proper”, as a state economic model and ideology seems to have been banished to the margins of the world scene. The disastrous results in terms of the dictatorships and totalitarianism that have ensued wherever an attempt has been made to implement a socialist model; the Fukuyaman proclamation of the “end of history” after communism collapsed, this end being equated with the eschatological triumph of free-market capitalism; and the insistence of multinational enterprises and capitalist governments on the expansion of global capital appear to some extent to have marked the death of socialism and marxist critique. 2. However, it cannot be denied that fundamental contradictions remain and are increasing in intensity. Recent events, such as often violent demonstrations whenever and wherever bodies seen to be representative of global capitalism, such as the World Trade Organisation, meet, and the upsurge in anti-western sentiment, especially in Islamic middle-eastern nations, point to a trend that now denies the triumphant mood in the West during the early nineties.
Magnus and Cullenberg referred to these already in 1994 in their Introductions to Derrida’s Specters of Marx: Given the difficulties some democratic, free market economies are experiencing – including the plight of the homeless, the lack of adequate health care, environmental degradation, and enormous debt burdens – what sort of model for the future do we have? And what is one to make of the destructive, even violent “nationalisms” which have followed in the wake of the collapse of communism, not to mention virulent forms of ethnocentrism and xenophobia perhaps not seen since Hitler’s Germany? What does this imply then forthe global economy and life throughout our shared world? (viii) Derrida also takes note of the economic contradictions undermining the “end” of history: And how can one overlook, moreover, the economic war that is raging today both between [the United States and the European Community] and within the European Community? How can one minimize the conflicts of the GATT treaty and all that it represents, which the complex strategies of protectionism recall every day, not to mention the economic war with Japan and all the contradictions at work within the trade between the wealthy countries and the rest of the world, the phenomena of pauperization and the ferocity of the “foreign debt”, the effects of what [Marx’s] Manifesto also called “the epidemic of overproduction” and the “state of momentary barbarism”it can induce in so-called civilized societies, and so forth? (1994: 63) 3. We have seen the effects of the GATT conflicts in cities like Seattle and Melbourne, with large-scale demonstrations against the World Trade Organisation. Much more powerful, shocking and consequential a symbol of late capitalist contradictions, however, is the destruction of the towering World Trade Centre in New York by suicide bombers earlier this year and the ensuing “War on Terrorism” waged by the West upon Afghanistan. 4. It seems though, that with the “end” of history, the West has also experienced the loss of history. A truly critical (self-)analysis, requiring at least a depth consistent with that of the Marxian tradition is patently lacking in light of the virtually automatic and instant response of what has been widely dubbed as the “War on Terrorism” (as opposed to, say, ” Yet another War in Afghanistan”).
The Essay on The Causes of World War I 3
The causes of World War I. World War I like many other events in history, occured in wake and equally influential events that led to a single outcome. Yet, there was one major cause of this war. Although there were some little insignifacant causese of this war. Some historians have argued that imperialism should bear the responsability, while others claim that nationalism was the cause. And still ...
The Term Paper on Classical Management Theory Work Theories Workers
Classical Management Theory Early Management Theories Early Theories of Organizations emerged mainly for military and Catholic Church. The metaphor of the machine was dominant, where organizations are viewed as machines. Therefore, the organizational application was, since workers behave predictably (as machines do rarely deviate from the norm), management knows what to expect, and workers ...
5. What of the ‘reality’ of socialism though? Feher, Heller and Markus (1983) have argued that, whatever else they have been, those countries which have defined themselves as socialist have been anything but.
Socialism has not yet actually existed: The new society, the ‘dictatorship over needs’, is neither a novel, modified form of (state) capitalism, nor is it socialism – it is ‘something else’. It is a social formation completely different from any that has existed in European or world history to date and it is equally different from any relevant conception in terms of which socialism, either ‘scientifically’ or in a utopian manner, has ever been conceived (221).
As they go on to explain, one of the reasons for this spectacular failure of socialism to become a real social formation is that, Marxism (and socialist theories in general) were much too self indulgently value-free, in the positivistic sense typical of nineteenth-century theories, to make unambiguously clear the conditions, the fulfilment of which would constitute socialism (and conversely, the conditions, the want of which constitutes an anti-capitalist formation, which however cannot and should not be identified with socialism) (Feher, Heller & Markus, 1983: 229).
6. Both Lukacs’ concept of reification and Heller’s analysis of the Marxist theory of needs, which I attempt to elucidate here, are themselves attempts to counter this positivism inherent in Marxism, which has tended to plague socialism to its extreme detriment wherever it attempts to engender itself as a social reality. This type of curbing of positivism in Marxian critique has appeared elsewhere also, for example in Baudrillard’s [Symbolic Exchange] which tends to criticise the valorisation and naturalisation of the concept “work” over and against that of (excessive) “play”, and in Derrida’s already cited Specters of Marx (1994), which highlights particularly that historically sited Marxism and communisms are mediated by the societies, cultures and traditions in which they appear and argues for a plurality of Marxism(s) and even of the proper name Marx.
The Term Paper on Explaining Marx
In Karl Marx's early writing on "estranged labour" there is a clear and prevailing focus on the plight of the labourer. Marx's writing on estranged labour is and attempt to draw a stark distinction between property owners and workers. In the writing Marx argues that the worker becomes estranged from his labour because he is not the recipient of the product he creates. As a result labour is ...
7. Concepts such as Lukacs’ ‘reification’ and Heller’s ‘dissatisfaction’ are still valid, especially in light of the triumphant ‘self-indulgence’ and ‘positivism’ of capitalist theories, such as globalisation and economic rationalism, which are now attempting in a similar manner that appears to many people as more dictatorial than democratic, at the least in a ‘sinister’ manner, to become global social realities. For this reason I have digressed somewhat: too often university essays can seem abstract exercises, with little relevance to the ‘real’ world, but in digressing onto recent historical contradictions, I want to highlight that Marxist theory need not die peacefully at all, or simply be an academic exercise in a theory which is only of historical interest. 8. Both Lukacs in his analysis of reification and Heller in her analysis of needs in Marx posit as central effects of commodifaction the fact that the worker becomes dominated by and alienated from his own activity and labour power – the effect of commodification is fundamentally one of estrangement and alienation. Heller (1974: 48) defines this as follows: In alienation (and particularly in capitalism) the end/means relation inherent in labour is turned upside down and becomes its opposite. In commodity producing society, use value (the product of concrete labour) does not serve to satisfy needs.
Its essence consists, on the contrary, in satisfying the needs of the person to whom it does not belong. The nature of the use value that the worker produces is all the same to him; he bears no relation to it. Hence, the worker in modern capitalism is alienated from his labour as concrete because its product serves to satisfy the needs of someone else, not his own. What the worker performs for himself is ‘abstract labour’ (48) which he performs for another in exhange for money in order to satisfy his own necessary needs, which labour appears then as an obectivated commodity when rendered as concrete. The result is that “capitalist industry and agriculture do not produce for needs, nor for their satisfaction. The end of production is the valorisation of capital, and the satisfaction of needs (on the market) is only a means towards this end” (49).
The Essay on Marx 5
Marx Karl Marx represents one of the most controversial philosophical approaches in his researches and works. In his early writing on Alienated Labor, there is a clear and prevailing focus on the predicament of the laborer. In my eyes it is an attempt to draw a stark distinction between property owners and workers. The purpose of this paper is to view Marx's concept of alienation and how it ...
9. Lukacs renders this alienation in terms of the reification of the commodity: What is of central importance here is that because of this situation [commodity reification] a man’s own activity, his own labour becomes something objective and independent of him, something that controls him by virtue of an autonomy alien to man (1971: 86,87).
10. Although Lukacs sources his analysis of reification in the section in Marx’s Capital entitled ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof’ (Lukacs, 1971: 86), we can see the essence of both of the above citations in Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In these, in a much stronger tone than is used in, say, Capital, Marx already develops the themes of alienation, commodity reification and the concept of the worker’s needs and their satisfaction, or the impossibility of satisfying these under capitalism. In terms of reification and the alienation of man’s labour, Marx writes: the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commoditiesthe wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in ….
